Eternity in an Hour
by hiddenhibernian
Summary: The doomsday prophets were right: the end is nigh. This time, having the right wand won't be enough to save either wizards or Muggles. Hermione's younger self would have been horrified by what she is planning to do, but she stopped caring about such things a long time ago. Post-DH, EWE.
1. A Plague on Both Your Houses

******This story **is a gift fic written for my beta MysticDew, to thank her for all her work on 'After The Flood'.

**Krystle Lynne very kindly beta-d this in record time – thank you so much! Any remaining mistakes are my own.**

* * *

**Chapter 1 **

**A Plague on Both Your Houses**

**-oOo-**

They could pinpoint the origin of the pandemic down to the space of an hour.

Hermione was present at what remained of the Ministry for Magic when they received an official communiqué from the International Confederation of Wizards, confirming that the working theory the Outbreak Committee had formulated was indeed correct.

It arrived by e-mail, but looked like it had started its life as an old-fashioned letter at some stage. In the topsy-turvy world they lived in, remnants of what used to be normal rose like peaks above a flooded valley, reminding them of what life had been like less than a year ago. The internet still remained functional at times, less vulnerable to interruptions than the antiquated fixed telephone network that had collapsed weeks earlier.

The dispatch bore the familiar official letterhead of the International Confederation of Wizards, a nine-headed hydra symbolising its global reach. Hermione had always found the imagery vaguely disturbing, but it hardly mattered anymore. On wizarding parchment the hydra's heads tossed and hissed; on the crumbled, poor-quality printout thrust into her hand by a breathless Sturgis Podmore, the creature looked like a malformed fern.

Hermione couldn't understand why he was in such a hurry. Maybe Sturgis still was capable of appreciating the simple pleasure of solving a riddle that previously had eluded him.

For quite a long time, where the disease had originated seemed to be of the utmost importance.

Along with Sturgis, Hermione had been part of the task force assembled by the British Ministry when they first acknowledged that it wasn't just a Muggle matter. She had, in fact, also been involved in the very first – strictly unofficial – attempt to identify the source of the contagion, back when the wizarding authorities still were able to pretend to themselves that they would remain entirely unaffected.

At the time, it had disgusted her to see wizards disregard the suffering among the Muggle population completely. It had only been a decade since the war, but the fleeting sense of kinship Kingsley had tried to foster had already been forgotten. Much to the astonishment of some of her co-investigators, Draco had also joined them. It had clearly escaped their attention that Draco abhorred needless loss of life. Contrary to what most people gave him credit for, he had learnt many things during the war, compassion for Muggles being just one of them. Draco had shared Hermione's contempt for wizards content to wash their hands of their fellow human beings succumbing to the disease at an alarming rate.

He didn't, however, share Hermione's impotent rage at those who didn't live up to her expectations of basic human decency.

Draco may have shed the pure-blood prejudices of his upbringing, but he was still clinging on to the deep cynicism that had been bred into him with astonishing perseverance. Not even a year of unwilling association with Hermione as a colleague, followed by friendship and ultimately a rather splendid conversion to lovers, had been sufficient to cure him of his deep mistrust for most of humanity.

As the Outbreak Committee eventually had helped establish, the infestation currently sweeping across the planet had originated from behind a sealed trap door in the basement of a bakery in suburban Tunis.

It wasn't quite as preposterous as it sounded once you knew that the name of the suburb was Carthage, once the capital of the great Phoenician empire. Its story was familiar to anyone who, like Draco, had been favoured with a classical education.

-oOo-

* * *

Smoke was rising from the ruins surrounding the hazy emptiness that was the last pocket of Carthage remaining to be conquered. Aulus Castus, Wizard Field Commander of the Roman armies in Africa, turned his hard gaze on it, planning his next attack.

It had taken centuries of warfare and three Punic wars to get to this point.

The incompetence of Aulus' superiors in this third and last war, when all that remained of Carthage's empire was the city itself, hadn't exactly helped. At the beginning of the war it had taken weeks to ship out enough equipment to cut off access to the city with magical means.

Commander-in-chief consul Calpurnius Piso's reluctance to allow his wizarding attachment to even attend meetings about strategy had further delayed the start of effective magical attacks.

The expansion of the Roman Empire had been aided considerably by the deployment of wizards alongside ordinary soldiers. The opposition facing the legions as they swept across the Mediterranean seldom realised the tactical advantages this brought, not before it was already too late. Greek wizards may have laid the foundations to modern magical theory, but they couldn't have organised their way out of an Amphora, much less mount an effective defence against magical siege weapons.

The Phoenician wizards weren't much better. Having failed to successfully imitate Roman tactics and integrate magical and Muggle forces to repel the invaders, all they amounted to in the end was prolonging the siege until the only buildings that remained unconquered in what once had been a proud, prosperous city were the remnants of wizarding Carthage.

The new consul dispatched from Rome to make sure the destruction of the Phoenicians continued as planned, Scipio Aemilianus, had had his little dramatic moment yesterday when the Muggle war had ended and the survivors of the vicious three-year siege had been carted off to be sold into slavery.

Whispers of his tears for the fall of an empire, prompted by the realisation that Rome one day inevitably too would fall, had spread around the camps like wildfire. Scipio was popular and, more importantly, had led them to victory; therefore his lapse into sentimentality was viewed with grudging respect rather than contempt by most of his troops.

Aulus wasn't taken in as easily.

Pretty words meant nothing: what mattered were arms and men and magic. Rome would stand for as long as her armies could defend her, no matter what effeminate Greeks may be nattering on about. In his experience fate travelled with the victors; the conquered would sooth their tears with talk of destiny and luck as best they could.

Scipio, the Senate's golden boy, had almost lost his nerve when faced with the reality of carrying out his orders from back home. It had taken a mild Compulsion spell from Aulus' army-issue concealed wand (the one none of the Muggles knew he had) to ensure Scipio did his duty and destroyed Carthage once and for all.

The sooner young Scipio learnt that mercy had no place in battle, the better.

It had taken three years to beat the one city that remained of the old Punic empire; three years of Incendio-ing scorpions nesting in Aulus' boots when he woke up; three years of seeing fresh-faced recruits being charred into grizzled veterans by the desert sun, and three years of facing increasingly more devastating spells churned out by the wizards on the other side.

Pitying the enemy didn't change any of it; all Aulus wanted to do was finish this damned war and go home to his family and his Sabinian farm. For all his vaunted brilliance, Scipio didn't seem to understand that it was what most soldiers wanted, to finish the job and go home.

Compassion wouldn't get them home any faster.

Hasdrubal, the leader of the Carthaginians – Aulus had heard the prisoners referring to him as their Boetharch – had surrendered yesterday, and all that remained to do before the wizarding contingent finally could return to Rome was to wipe out the hidden magic enclave.

Aulus had ordered the ordinary legionaries to stand back and let the wizards handle it. The area was too small to contain any meaningful Muggle force, so Muggles would only be in the way.

The sustained barrage of spells they threw at the Carthaginians still holding out didn't have any discernible effects after the first half-hour, and the spectators (kept at a respectable distance) started to thin out. Neither Aulus nor his soldiers were disconcerted; they could keep the onslaught up for weeks, and in all their wars they hadn't yet encountered any wards that could withstand it indefinitely. Celts, Macedonians, Iberians and Illyrians had all buckled in the face of Roman resolve, and so would eventually the descendants of the hated Hannibal.

Until then, the wild smell of battle magic rose high in the air, mingling with the stench of the bodies of the fallen. It was the scent of the battlefield turned into funeral pyre, the smell of victory.

It took four days and three nights until the wards started to weaken. Aulus was asleep with his boots on when an impossibly young recruit who had cut himself shaving (did he even have anything to shave?) roused him with a deferential shake. After three decades as a soldier, it only took Aulus the blink of an eye to wake up.

By the time they approached the perimeter of the on-going magical assault, he had learnt that the first tears in the wards had started to appear half an hour ago.

Once they were close enough to hear the creaking of heavy leather boots and clanging metal of body armour and shoulder plates grinding together, the wards were well on their way to being dismantled. Aulus didn't have to wait long to see the shimmering nothingness hovering over the sand being rent apart like a veil. The bubble of magic shattered like a shield smashed to smithereens by Gallic axe, the two sounds curiously similar despite being a sea apart.

The bedraggled-looking buildings that had been hidden behind the wards were the same colour as the sand. A rooster crowed; other than that, there was only silence. Nothing stirred within the enclave.

Aulus' squad maintained a cautious distance, and he was glad to see they didn't lose their heads at the last hurdle. There was no need to issue any order for his men to get ready; even the raw recruits had their sword in one hand and their wand in the other.

It must have been obvious to the Carthaginians that they were completely surrounded, but any hope that they would surrender quietly was quashed as a shower of missiles burst forth from the still deserted dwellings.

"Ad testudinem!" Aulus barked, his amplified voice ringing out across the battlefield. A sound like thunder echoed around him as the soldiers seamlessly arranged themselves into turtle formations. They lined up in double ranks, the first line of men protecting them from the front with their shield while the second covered them from above.

Enchanted rocks bounced off the magically reinforced shields; the second round from the defenders fared no better. An eerie silence hung over the amassed troops.

After everything that had preceded it, Aulus' order to charge was strangely muted, as clipped and lacking in emotion as an order to his slave to shave him. His steady voice belied the tension in his sinews.

He nodded to the legionaries standing next to him, but there was no need; they had already started banging their shields into the ground in unison. Three times, and then the chant rose loud and strong: "RO-MA! RO-MA! RO-MA!"

The tortoises were on the move. Slowly, but with the inevitability of death or taxes, the turtle formations crept closer and closer, jerking one step forward at each syllable. This was Rome in all her power and glory; those who opposed her had better find a way to defeat a wall made of men or perish.

Aulus adjusted the visor on his helmet, crammed onto his head as an afterthought as he left his tent. Cautiously, he followed in the wake of his legionaries with a retinue of tribunes gathered around him. Between them they had almost a century of battle experience, none of which suggested that the Carthaginians willingly would enter into slavery.

The enemy didn't break cover even when a mere ten paces remained between the steadily shrinking ring of turtle formations and the dwellings.

It was time.

"Percute!" Aulus ordered just before the next chant was due. The formations broke up, turning back into a line of attacking soldiers rather than faceless shields. They only had time to advance a few paces before all hell broke loose.

Spells cleared a lethal path through the air and a cacophony of hurls and screams erupted, accompanied by the clanging of swords and the sound of mud and brick walls shattering. It was an uneven fight, fury and desperation being no match for Roman discipline.

It took only a few minutes to subdue all visible resistance.

The survivors were carted off to the side and the soldiers turned their attention to the still intact buildings, proceeding with caution. They left the largest building until last. In the soft light of the setting sun, it looked remarkably resilient despite the barrage of spells it had been hit with.

Just as the last enchantments were laid on the battering ram, the doors to the building they were preparing to break down silently swung open.

Aulus and his men stood straight behind their wards, confident that they were protected from whatever was coming at them.

When a desiccated old man in green robes emerged nothing changed. Aulus noted with approval that none of the Roman soldiers so much as lowered their wands. His back ramrod straight, the elderly wizard seemed to teeter precariously on the steps to the entrance before regaining his balance with his staff. Looking with disdain at his victorious enemies, he seemed far too proud to be one of the vanquished.

Surreptitiously, Aulus gave the man next to him a small nod.

A green flash failed entirely to take out the wizened old man, and ricocheted off the Roman wards on the rebound instead. Once he had a clear path to the target Sextus Merula didn't often fail to his mark; something else was at work here.

The old wizard perched on top of the steps raised his staff to the skies, shouting something unintelligible in a guttural language Aulus recognised as Phoenician. At his elbow, the interpreter they had picked up at the start of the campaign offered a translation without needing to be prompted.

"I am Barekbaal, and I curse you to the ends of the earth! Dogs of Rome, may the flies of the desert eat you and leave no meat on your bones. May your sons perish, even the cattle on your land wither and die! May the blood of the innocent devour you, and the very air you breathe consume you!"

As a connoisseur Aulus had to admit that it was an impressive curse, accompanied as it was by a burst of sickly-coloured, yellow fumes spewing forth from the old man's wand. There was a metallic taste to the air, testament to the power of the words of the Carthaginian wizard.

With a final, terrible cry of "Death! Death to all of you!" the old man lashed out with his wand a final time, and set himself aflame. A great flame rose to the incongruously peaceful blue sky, singing the eyebrows off the soldiers closest to the column of fire devouring what had been a wizard only a moment ago. In a seemingly impossible short space of time, only a pile of charred ashes was left on the steps of the last piece of unconquered Carthage.

It was almost a shame that it all had been for nought.

For the serving soldier, dying curses were an occupational hazard. So far, the worst thing that had happened to Aulus was his nose falling off when a Lusitanian witch's aim had gone slightly askew. He hadn't been commander then, and it had been a very long trip back to Rome and the Healers in Aesculapius' temple. It didn't bear thinking about what the banter on the ship would have been like if she actually had hit her intended target.

Aulus had always felt that a man wouldn't have stooped to such tactics, even at death's door.

Since then, Aulus had been doubly vigilant to ensure his soldiers didn't leave themselves exposed to any last-minute heroics. Barekbaal could have cursed them all to Hades for a month, and he still wouldn't have harmed so much as a Roman hair. Their wards could keep the most malevolent of curses encapsulated until they consumed the caster rather than the intended targets.

Barekbaal's self-immolation had simply cut out one step of the standard procedure, allowing the curse-disposal unit to proceed straight to burying the remains as deep as the desert sand allowed.

The war was finally over.

"Start digging, lads. By the time you're finished, no one will be able to tell that there ever was a city here, much less an empire."

Aulus turned his back on the debris left from the fight, and something in the set of his shoulders loosened. No doubt there would be more wars, but for now he could rest easy.

Rome was safe, and anyone opposing her in the future would know what had befallen Carthage for daring to threaten her empire.

* * *

The wizarding world seemed to produce homicidal maniacs with embarrassing regularity. By the time the epidemic started its unstoppable march across the world, Hermione had long since resigned herself to the inevitable and started monitoring the wizards in Britain in order to identify the next Dark Lord before he grew too powerful. Draco's network of cronies on the shady side of the law had proved to be invaluable in that pursuit.

However, the common or garden zealot who wished to see the world being consumed by fire generally lacked the wherewithal to do so. Witness Tom Riddle: in the end he hadn't even managed to ensure his own survival, much less permanently change even the British Isles.

The difference between the usual kind of fiend that popped up every century or so and Barekbaal wasn't a matter of scope or ambition, but sheer dumb luck.

In a frenzied dig which would have made archaeological history, should there be anyone left to write it, a team of Muggle and wizard archaeologists and anthropologists had excavated the site where Barekbaal had perished, mercilessly tearing through more than two millennia of civilisations.

What they found was horrifying, even for people hardened by the daily harvest of fresh bodies in the streets of Tunis.

When Carthage had fallen to the Romans, the city had been completely razed to the ground and its territories sown with salt to ensure that no living thing ever would grow there again to threaten Rome's hegemony. However, a century after its annihilation Carthage had been rebuilt by that formidable wizard and general, Julius Caesar.

If anyone remembering Barekbaal and his curse had been alive by then, they would still have had no way of knowing where he had been buried, or that his malediction hadn't perished with him and the rest of old Carthage.

The new city rose above the old and on the exact spot where the Carthaginian wizard had hurled his dying words at the invading Roman army, a temple was built.

It was official Roman policy to accommodate local gods into their pantheon; defeat presumably being perceived as less ignoble if you were allowed to hang onto the gods that hadn't delivered the goods, as it were. The temple erected above Barekbaal's final resting place was consecrated to the old Phoenician gods Tanit and Ba'al Hammon.

In retrospect just about any other ancient deity had been preferable, even vengeful Hecate.

Tanit was also known as Astarte, the goddess of war and the demon of lust according to the Jews. Ba'al Hammon, the Lord of Two Horns, was her consort, and the sons and daughters of their supplicants passed through the fire the prophet Jeremiah thundered against. In their Tophet, children were burned as sacrifices to the gods. The power from the blood sacrifice of the innocent seeped down the dark shafts of earth to where Barekbaal was resting.

One dark offering called out to the other, and below the city the pit of shadows grew.

The republican Roman army wizards had made sure that nothing could get out from behind the containment charms they had laid, but they could hardly have foreseen that anything would want to penetrate them from the outside.

Oblivious to the threat lurking beneath its foundations, New Carthage and the Roman Empire it was part of prospered for centuries.

Augustus, the first Emperor, was a Squib. His distrust of magic forced the wizarding world to a less prominent position in society and in the imperial armies, until the long golden afternoon of the Roman Empire in its heyday slowly turned into night. Six centuries after the fall of Carthage, its armies couldn't withstand the assaults from the borders any longer. The Rome Aulus Castus had known was no more.

Invading armies overran Carthage; Visigoth barbarians were followed by the troops of the Prophet and so on, until centuries upon centuries had passed and the last of the invaders were driven out. Beneath the foundations of the modern city the curse of Barekbaal lurked undisturbed, until a local builder-turned-developer got planning permission for a shopping centre and started buying up local shops around the site.

The end of the world Hermione knew started when the first bulldozer hit the containment spell that had kept Barekbaal's curse enclosed for more than two millennia. After all that time, simple force was sufficient to burst the wards and release the malevolent force into the world again.

Having grown fat and powerful on the blood of countless children sacrificed to long-dead gods, the curse was more destructive than its creator ever could have imagined.

The last wizard familiar with Phoenician magic had perished some eight hundred years after Carthage. As far as the Victorian researchers who had rediscovered the Great Library of Alexandria had been able to establish from ancient papyri, it had been quite advanced if somewhat lacking in theoretical concepts.

Barekbaal had not seen fit to discriminate between Romans and other tribes, innocent of destroying his people. He had laid his curse on everyone within reach. More than two thousand years after the act, it manifested itself as a virulent respiratory disease, which spread like wildfire and had a hundred percent mortality rate for Muggles and wizards alike.

One didn't need to know the precise level of oxygen required per unit of fuel to set the world on fire.

The onset was deceptively similar to the ordinary flu, except for the black pinpricks appearing around the tonsils of the infected. Like the soot from the fires consuming Carthage, they meant certain death. As the illness progressed the black areas grew, until the victim seemed to have a black throat. By then, they usually had other things to worry about, however, like being on the brink of death.

The contagion spread through the air. Initially, the wizarding world was less affected than Muggles, as they tended to live in warded compounds which appeared to keep the virus out temporarily. Even the strongest wards couldn't keep it out in the long run. Sooner or later, coughing and wheezing would herald the onset of the disease, even among those who had believed themselves untouchable.

Magic wasn't static; it was a living thing, and all living things must eventually die.

Entropy crept in even if airtight wards were being refreshed constantly. It only took one microbe to infect a previously safe environment, as the wizarding world found out to its cost after dismissing the epidemic as a Muggle concern during the first crucial weeks.

There was nowhere to run, nowhere safe to retreat, and the Healers were powerless in the face of the quickly mutating disease. They weren't use to working in haste; the cure for dragon pox had taken five decades to develop.

It was likely that the next five months would see the end of wizardkind.

-oOo-

* * *

**The title is from the poem 'Auguries of Innocence' by William Blake. The chapter title is of course from 'Romeo and Juliet', Act 3, Scene 1, by William Shakespeare. **


	2. How Did It Get So Late So Soon?

**Chapter 2**

**How Did It Get So Late So Soon?**

**-oOo-**

For the second time in her life Hermione had to tell her parents that her strange, wonderful world of magic and wizards posed a direct threat to them.

"Are you saying there's _magic_ behind all this?" Her mother was bristling; she had forgiven her daughter for taking her memories away and sending her to Australia, but she was still deeply suspicious of the wizarding world.

"We think so. You know I was involved in setting up a committee for those who wanted to help the affected. We've been in contact with other wizards down in Tunisia and elsewhere..."

Hermione had commandeered the usual suspects into joining her Muggle Epidemic Support Group to provide what support they could in the face of the rapidly spreading H18N9 virus. Lately, it had become taken for granted that Draco would join the familiar list of names corralled from the DA, as always headed by Harry, Luna, Neville and the Weasleys.

It had only taken Ron eight years to acknowledge that Draco had been a minor player in the war, and in far over his head for most of it. They would never be close friends, but as long as Harry or Hermione were on hand to prevent Draco's sarcastic quips or Ron's frequent references to Slytherin rodents from escalating they managed to co-exist without bloodshed.

In Hermione's books, that was an absolute marvel.

Pansy Parkinson, who was working as a Healer at St. Mungo's, had been an unexpected addition to their ranks. It was through her that they had established contact with the Chinese Ministry, who were the first to realise that the pathogen had a magical component to it.

Magical microbiology was about as experimental as the cutting edge between science and magic got, and it had required a worldwide virtual team effort to isolate the effect of magic on the epidemic. Hermione's parents understood the science better than she did, quickly appropriating her proffered research notes to establish for themselves exactly what was going on.

Her father's pale face told her everything she needed to know.

"That bad, is it?" Her throat was suddenly very dry, and she reached for the by now cold cup of tea by her elbow.

"The mortality rate is one hundred percent, the chain of transmission can't be broken and it's impossible to isolate the virus, due to the– the malevolence of the curse. Hermione, this is not an epidemic. It's death, certain death." Alan Granger wasn't a man given to hyperbole; he meant it literally.

"I know." Hearing it being spelled out by her father still made it worse.

"The announcement from the WHO that they were developing a vaccine – I cannot see how it could be true..." There was still some vestige left of her mother's belief in the role of international institutions for the betterment of the world, but it seemed to be waning fast.

"It isn't. They know, believe me. No point in making the mass panic any worse, though – at least the rioting has died down a bit."

In the pandemonium that had ensued when the outbreak became global, the announcement that magic was real had garnered little attention (wisely, the wizarding world had shrunk from publicly acknowledging the magical origins of the disease, or the reaction may have been very different).

In Britain, the Muggle police had barely raised an eyebrow before drafting in Harry and the other Aurors to keep a semblance of order. They were the ultimate fast-response unit and had undoubtedly contributed to keeping the peace, such as it was.

The WHO proclamation that it only was a matter of time before a vaccine was developed released a week ago, immediately followed by all scientists involved going underground, had calmed the public somewhat. It had also encouraged most people who could to try to escape as far as possible from the madding crowd in an attempt to survive until then. The Highlands in Scotland suddenly became a very popular destination.

Tearing what little hope they had retained from her parents didn't ease the weight on Hermione's shoulders; if anything, she felt worse.

"I've got an invitation for you, from the Malfoys..." Persuading them to come and stay at Malfoy Manor, protected by the strongest wards on a private residence in Britain, would at least serve as a temporary distraction.

* * *

"Harry, please-"

"It's only delaying the inevitable. You know that, Hermione." His eyes were older now, and framed with lines as thin as whispers in the night, but the expression was the same as when he had walked out to face Voldemort. This was another end, but not even Harry Potter would be able to return from it this time. "If we're dying anyway, we may as well die in our own beds. I've talked to Ginny, and we've made up our minds."

"You're so bloody fatalistic sometimes, Harry Potter! What if there is a cure, or a vaccine; _something_ – are you seriously telling me you're just giving up?"

"There are far worse things than death–"

This couldn't be borne.

"Don't give me that, Harry. Just – don't." For once, Hermione was at a loss for words.

"It's true, though." Harry looked about as old as Dumbledore had been when he was sharing his dubious wisdom.

"He was more than a hundred years old, and he was talking about fighting in a war, not all of civilisation dying with you!"

"That's what would have happened in the end if Voldemort had won, isn't it? Besides, it doesn't matter what we do, death is coming to us anyway," he continued stubbornly and someone else who hadn't shared a tent with Harry for month upon hopeless month may have missed the way his eye was twitching helplessly.

Hermione didn't. Instead, she drew a heaving breath and almost managed to retain her composure.

"The children wouldn't understand. It's easier to pretend things are normal at home. Why upset them, when it might only buy us a few weeks? We'll be going to The Burrow, but we're not moving to Malfoy Manor. I'm sorry, Hermione."

They were in the Potters' kitchen, which could have been taken straight out of _Country Life_ if you disregarded the inevitable magical clock (all arms now pointing to Mortal Peril) and the general debris of family life.

Late morning sunshine, golden and slow, was streaming in through the windows, as Hermione realised that she may as well have been sitting in a tomb containing everything Harry had ever wanted. He had come so very close, only to have it snatched away.

Crying wouldn't be helpful she admonished herself. Not even phoenix tears could help them now.

"I understand. Don't think I don't, Harry. I just wish things could have been different."

There was nothing any of them could say to that.

Hermione really had to go – this had been a last-ditch effort for something she had already known was a lost cause – but she couldn't bear to say goodbye to Harry. They finished their tea in desolate silence. Both of them would vastly have preferred to go down fighting; waiting passively didn't sit easy with either.

"You've been- No one could have had better friends than I have." Harry's voice faltered a little but his eyes shone clear and true and steady. Hermione didn't know how to explain to him that he had it all wrong, that she had been the lucky one, and that she would be grateful even at the end for all she had been given.

* * *

There was one visit left to make. She wasn't looking forward to it.

* * *

"Hermione!" Ron waived to her over the milling crowd he had gathered in the run-down kitchen at Grimmauld Place. She pushed her way through, not bothering to apologise when she bumped into someone or jostled them into spilling their drink. There was plenty more where it came from; the kitchen looked like someone had stocked up on enough alcoholic beverages to outlast the Apocalypse. They would soon find out if they'd been right.

"Can we go somewhere else? It's a bit loud," she suggested after carving a space next to Ron and amplifying her voice so it could be heard over the racket of the party raging around them. There were a few familiar faces among the gaggle of partygoers. Seamus had planted both feet firmly on the kitchen table and was knocking back shots to cheers from the cluster of people surrounding him, and Hermione had spotted at least one other head of Weasley red bobbing around.

"Sirius' room?" Ron mimed and she nodded. After the sharp crack of their Apparitions, the silence of the fourth floor was deafening. Strands of laughter and music drifted up the stairs, but otherwise it was blessedly quiet.

A thin layer of dust covered the clothes carelessly strewn on the bed and the pile of Quidditch magazines on the bed stand.

"Moved back to The Burrow, then?" It was intended as a casual opening gambit, but Ron turned red and Hermione promptly revised her assumption. The only possible reason for that reaction was something she preferred not to stick her nose into. It had been more than a decade since they had been going out and Ron had absolutely no obligation to keep her informed of his sleeping arrangements, but she knew he would have told her if he'd had a steady girlfriend.

The drawback of regarding Ron as a brother after their brief experiment had ended was that it was mildly disturbing to imagine him doing more than holding hands with anyone else, much less multiple others. She hastily abandoned the subject.

"None of my business, forget I said it. Please." Traitorous flames were creeping up her own cheeks now, but they both stoutly pretended not to notice. What silly things people care about, Hermione thought to herself.

"What brings you here?" Fortunately, Ron was only too happy to change the topic of their conversation. "Not trying to convince me to come and stay with the ferret, are you?"

"I'm not delusional, Ron."

"Not anymore, you mean," he said, the vestige of a smile in his voice. Well, she'd had to try to persuade him, even if she had held out even less hope that he'd agree to seek refuge at Malfoy Manor than that the Potters would.

Hermione couldn't restrain herself any longer. Apparently, she never really had managed to get over the urge to stop Ron from making poor decisions, no matter how hard she had tried.

"Why are you doing this, Ron? Why not make the most of the time you've got, instead of wasting it?"

Stung, he looked at her reproachfully.

"I'm not wasting my time. Didn't you say yourself that you couldn't conceive of what else we could do?" When it became clear that a cure was beyond the pitiful reach of their combined forces, their committee had been disbanded. It had been some time after most workers at the Ministry had been sent home, the Minister for Magic having decided that it would be unethical to command his employees to volunteer at St. Mungo's. It wasn't as if he'd had any way of compelling them to obey, in any case.

"Yes, but this-"

"I'm going to The Burrow every day, if that's what you're wondering. Charlie's here somewhere, too."

"You know that's not what I meant."

"Well, what do you mean then? That we shouldn't have fun?" The words started pouring out of him quicker and quicker. "If we're going to snuff it anyway I want to make the most of the time I have, not just sit there waiting and be miserable! What would you have me do, anyway?" He kicked the pile of dirty socks on the floor and scattered them. "House-cleaning?"

Hermione fumbled for what to say, but there was no stopping Ron.

"It's not like it was during the war. The time we have now before it sweeps in is all the time anyone's ever likely to get. I think we owe it to- to what should have been, all those who should have come after us-" Ron's eyes were very bright and he wasn't quite looking at her, his gaze fixed just above her left shoulder.

If it hadn't been for Draco, Hermione could almost have fallen in love with him all over again. It was the bravest thing Ron had ever done, and Merlin knew he had quite the track record.

She should have known that the Ron she was going to meet wasn't the sixteen-year-old version, who had been incapable of dealing with feelings more complicated than hatred of Snape or admiration for his favourite Quidditch players.

There was only one thing she could do now.

"Oof! Hermione!" Ron almost barrelled over but managed to regain his balance, and gingerly wrapped his long arms around Hermione. Over his shoulder, she could see their intertwined bodies in the mirror on the ancient oak wardrobe.

A bushy mess of curls and slightly too long ginger wisps of hair mingled in a last goodbye, and she swallowed a sob. Ron rubbed her tentatively on the back; she could feel a slight tremor running through him but he didn't make a sound.

* * *

The last thing she did, before joining the others at Malfoy Manor, was to Apparate to the top of Carlton Hill in Edinburgh. When she had still been on rotation around the various divisions in the Department of Mysteries, Hermione had been stationed in the Scottish capital for a while. She had liked it so much she'd stayed when her time had been up, Flooing to work in London once the trainee program had brought her back to headquarters.

She had always loved Edinburgh.

The winding, cobblestoned streets weren't very different to Diagon Alley; only here they extended to the Muggle part of the city too. Unexpected glimpses of the sea or the Forth of Firth, or the reassuring presence of the hills, always made her feel like she was part of the landscape, unlike the uninspiring flatness of London. Her city was made up of steep hills and dark alleys below street level, majestic stone buildings and ramshackle wizarding tenements seemingly held together by Spellotape, and Hermione had felt as much at home around the university students as she did among the wizards.

There was no mist or clouds today; only relentlessly clear skies above the city. Carlton Hill was deserted. No more tourists with backpacks and thumbed guidebooks to climb on the faux Doric pillars of the National Monument, which looked for all the world like a Greek temple built up here in Scotland.

It was always windy up here. Hermione was grateful for the sharpness on the breeze biting her cheeks, distracting her from the tears forming at the corners of her eyes.

She had been happy here.

It was when she had been sharing a flat with Morag MacDougal overlooking one of the city's many cemeteries – you were never far from dead bodies in Edinburgh – that she had first become friends with Draco. The first time she had dragged him out into the Muggle world to experience its delights had been here, too. Particularly delicious hot chocolate had been the bait that time, and the memory of Draco's tight-lipped determination not to show any discomfort at being jostled by the Muggle crowds in the Georgian splendour of New Town (a mere three centuries old) still managed to produce the ghost of a smile.

Draco had known Morag, of course, since she was as pure-blooded as he was. Somehow, he had become a regular fixture at the kitchen table in their flat. Only a year after he had lost the bet to Hermione and been forced to venture out into the Muggle world with her, he would routinely pop down to their local, very Muggle coffee shop to rub shoulders with the students and return bearing lattes.

Well, being Draco Malfoy he still made a fuss about being used for menial errands, but he seemed to have got over his belief that Muggles were a separate species. He had insinuated himself into Hermione's life, until she had discovered one day that it wasn't Harry or Ron she was looking forward to tell about something, but Draco.

It hadn't exactly been easy from that point, but at least she had known her own heart then. If she wasn't mistaken, it had been during one of her solitary runs she had put the pieces together. Even a few months ago, just before everything normal had been suspended indefinitely, she had still Apparated up here regularly to revisit her old track around Arthur's Seat, the hill in the middle of the city.

Looking down at its craggy peaks, she noticed the flag at Holyrood Palace flying at half-mast. Hermione wondered absently if they would raise it if the king was in residence, the way they used to. Apparently they were down to King Harry now – hiding out at Balmoral hadn't saved the Windsors.

Taking one last breath of clean Scottish air, she wondered if she would ever stand here again. It was probably foolish to have come here in the first place, but she couldn't have stopped herself. Even her childhood home had been tainted by the war against Voldemort. This was one of the few places she only had ordinary, mostly happy memories from, recollections of a life well lived.

The familiar, grey buildings down in the city were the same as always. For a moment, she indulged in the illusion that it was still the Edinburgh of her memories, a city of rain-sodden streets and late nights with friends, before she left it behind.

* * *

The bees were dying.

When she fled the silence of the manor and sought refuge in the orchard Hermione had thought things couldn't get worse. Evidently she had been wrong.

Yesterday, coughing had echoed through the house; today, its absence hung over all of them and it was hard to even breathe.

It was Lucius who had become infected first. He hadn't left the manor, encased in its protective charms like an air bubble in a drop of water, since the wizarding world had realised the extent of the threat facing it. They had all adhered to the quarantine measures when returning from the world outside, so there was only one explanation as to why he had succumbed.

Their defences had been breached and the wards couldn't keep the contagion out. It turned out that knowing it was inevitable was quite different to the reality of it. A stricken stillness had descended over them, and even Hermione's mother's seemingly inexhaustible tenacity seemed to have taken a knock.

That morning, Lucius had disappeared before Narcissa woke up, leaving only a bunch of letters and his will behind. Nobody else had been infected yet, so his choice to die in exile had bought them all a little more time.

Hermione wasn't sure the price had been worth paying.

Draco hadn't uttered a word beyond mechanically polite monosyllables since he had read the letter his father had left him. She couldn't recall him ever looking more like a marble statue, even at the Battle of Hogwarts.

She had gone out into the gardens to seek some reassurance that, while the world of the humans may be disintegrating with the fever consuming civilisation, something would remain when they were gone. The roses would smell as sweet whether the humans were there or not; the cold light of the stars would shine just as clear when the last enclave had fallen to the virus.

It was the only comfort that remained to her now, but when she saw the crawling, seething mess of dying bees it was brutally torn asunder. She could see them succumbing before her eyes and the last gaunt shred of hope, that something would rise after humanity made such a mess of things, died too.

Hermione had read enough alarming reports on the demise of Britain's bee colonies in the Sunday newspapers to know how crucial they were to the circle of life. If there were no bees, there would eventually be no plants left either. If Barekbaal's long hand had reached insects, no life would survive.

In the Malfoy orchard, overflowing with September apples and with roses growing at the end of each orderly row of fruit trees, Hermione finally lost her mind.

At least, that was how she later would justify the decision she came to at the muted droning of the dying bees.

-oOo-

* * *

**The chapter title is from Dr Seuss, as you may have noticed. **


	3. Rage Against the Dying of the Light

****** Massive thanks to Krystle Lynne who very kindly beta-d this.**

* * *

**Chapter 3 **

**Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Light**

**-oOo-**

Most of the manor was asleep. The only light on the ground floor came from the library, where Hermione was hidden behind a wall of books ranging from newly published, shiny Muggle textbooks to battered magical volumes that appeared to be moving slightly on their own accord.

She had sent the last house-elf to bed an hour ago, so the cup of tea by her elbow was cold. Absent-mindedly, she flicked her wand at it to reheat the liquid but made a grimace as she swallowed it. Re-heated tea was an abomination, whether you were magical or Muggle.

It turned out that finishing the Time-Turner she had been trying to perfect even since she had started working for the Department of Mysteries was quite different when she was petrified at the thought of dying too soon, rather than treating it as the wizarding equivalent of working on her model railway. It was a pleasant surprise that the prospect of imminent eradication of all life served to make her work with clinical efficiency, rather than the panic exams had induced back in her schooldays.

Growing up during a war did apparently build character, as well as endowing you with persistent PTSD and a healthy mistrust of authority.

Hermione hadn't told anyone what she was doing. Not yet. Most of the others wouldn't be able to understand even the most basic of her hastily scribbled Arithmancy formulae anyway, much less help her to find her way at the limits of her painstakingly assembled understanding of how to manipulate one's place in the flow of time.

The only one who would be of any use was Draco; he had worked at the Department of Mysteries too, after all, and Hermione had to admit that he was quite as intelligent as she was.

She could only hope that it would be enough, and that he could be raised from his stupor before it was too late. Draco's reaction to Lucius' disappearance may have seemed all out of kilter to a casual observer who was only familiar with their stilted relationship after the war, but Hermione knew better. She suspected that Draco was mourning what could have been as much as the bitter embers of his failed relationship with his father.

Lucius could never change now, would never acknowledge the son he actually had rather than the heir he had imagined.

There seemed to be an infinite supply of things to grieve for these days.

The first breakthrough came when she went over Lazaresco's rebuttal to Novikov's self-consistency principle again. Hermione had always found it slightly aggravating that the best Muggle expositions on the matter were science-fiction novels and treatises, but she really didn't have time to worry about it.

Besides, only a bad workman blamed his tools, as her father was fond of saying.

After the first few days her parents seemed to have adjusted to the manor; they probably suspected that Hermione was up to something but had mercifully abstained from commenting on her frequent disappearances to the library.

Every evening, she made sure to catch up with them in the sitting room attached to their bedroom, where they had replaced some of the opulent Malfoy objets d'art with their own, more mundane picture frames and keepsakes. Their conversation usually went similar to what she imagined had been the polite mutterings of the first-class passengers abandoning the Titanic. Most nights, Hermione was a little ashamed at her own relief to escape back to her work.

She remembered the renowned French wizard Lazaresco from her third year at Hogwarts. His thesis that it's possible to change the past – whatever the Muggle scientist Novikov may say – but that the consequences would be catastrophic had figured heavily in the lectures she had been subject to before they let her loose with a Time-Turner.

In hindsight, giving a device that could cause a tear in the fabric of time to a fourteen-year-old seemed more reckless than she would have expected even from Dumbledore. Hermione had never been quite as responsible as she appeared to be, but she rather thought he should have deduced that from her being sorted in Gryffindor.

Reading Lazaresco with the benefit of another two decades of experience and a healthy dose of desperation, she thought she could see the inkling of a chance. Assuming that she managed to get her Time-Turner prototype to work, of course. Ironically, she would have needed another one to get enough hours in the day to do everything.

Hermione decided that at this moment in time, breaking the universe was a secondary concern.

* * *

"You cannot be serious." The prospect of his girlfriend tearing apart the fabric of time finally proved to be enough to resurrect Draco from the mire of failed expectations and lost chances he had succumbed to. If Hermione had been a little less practical and more adept at providing comfort, he mightn't have sunk so deep. Yet another failing to chalk up on her list.

"I'm entirely serious. Do I look like I'm trying to spread some light relief around here?"

"But what about- Look, remember when you told me about aliens and how they may we'll exist?" Naturally, Draco would have remembered the prospect of life somewhere out there, rather than the miraculous vastness of cosmos. Life was _interesting_. Even at the Department of Mysteries, he gravitated towards the types of magic that affected people, rather than the theories Hermione was so fond of. People could be manipulated; Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration couldn't.

"Yes?"

"What if there's not just out there? Do we really have the right to do something that could affect them, too?"

Hermione was extremely relieved to note that he still was talking about 'we', although she wasn't quite sure whether Draco was referring to humanity as a whole or just the two of them.

"I did think about that," she conceded. "And then I decided I don't care. Either they know and don't care, or they're not aware of us at all – and in that case they shouldn't be affected if I mess something up."

"To clarify: by 'messing up', you mean creating an inconsistency in the flow of time that could break the universe asunder?"

"It's not like you to be stating the obvious."

"In this case I think it's warranted," he harrumphed. Draco was looking at her with inquisitive grey eyes, and if there had been less at stake Hermione would almost have burst into tears with the relief of seeing him more like himself again. Frowning slightly as he turned the possibilities over in his mind, the fine lines of his eyebrows slanted slightly downwards towards his patrician nose, so similar to his mother's. Abruptly, he seemed to reach a conclusion. "How will we do it? I'm assuming even you haven't found a way to travel further back in time than five hours?"

"Not if I don't want to end up like Eloise Mintumble, anyway." 1899 wasn't that long ago in the Department of Mysteries; the escapades of the unfortunate Madam Mintumble were still passed on to keen greenhorns as a cautionary tale. Hermione had been keener than most; she had heard it recounted three times now.

"Wait a second, do you have a Time-Turner? I thought there were all destroyed. Where did you get it from?"

"I don't actually have one, as such," Hermione admitted. "I'm building one though – I just need your help with a few details..." She started digging out her slightly rumpled to-do list from her pocket, but was interrupted by a strange, clucking noise from Draco's direction. He appeared to have folded himself in two, and seemed to have some difficulties breathing.

In these times anything that could be remotely interpreted as signs of infection was received with dread, and Hermione immediately stopped trying to retrieve her list. She felt light-headed all of a sudden, as if there wasn't enough oxygen in the air to breathe.

"Draco–" she stammered, and he raised his head from its position somewhere between his knees. Tears had gathered in the corners of his eyes, and he could finally breathe in enough air to laugh properly.

"Only you-" he managed to get out between the paroxysms of laughter, and Hermione felt a familiar urge to either kiss or strangle him. Preferably a combination of both. "Only you could hatch a whole plan around a Time-Turner that hinges on you being able to build one, when no one has managed to do it since 1649..."

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained. They didn't teach us caution in Gryffindor," Hermione commented drily, her heart still hammering uncomfortably fast. "Are you going to help me, or what?"

* * *

The prototype Time-Turner was beautiful; trust Draco to insist on bringing an element of style to the proceedings.

Fashioned from bits and pieces from various Malfoy keepsakes stowed away over the centuries, a tiny hourglass hung from the late Artemisia Malfoy's oval sapphire brooch. It spun gently in the late afternoon sunlight, the reflection from the tiny diamonds adorning its edges dancing on the walls of the library.

The enormity of what Hermione was about to do seemed to muffle all sounds, lending a touch of unreality to the proceedings. They could have been in a film, she thought distantly; the set of Malfoy Manor was certainly impressive enough, and with the backdrop of the epidemic-

For a merciful second she entertained the possibility that it was all an illusion, a trick of the mind – perhaps she had fallen under a spell and dreamt it all... It was enough to recall her mother's pale, drawn face from the breakfast table to dispel the notion. Another house-elf had disappeared during the night. Their defences were crumbling fast; there was no time to waste on self-indulgent meanderings.

Sunlight streaming through the open windows seemed to light up Draco's hair like a halo as he ever so carefully hung the Time-Turner around her throat.

Only one of them would go. The direction charms would carry the time-traveller to the same location as they had been at the time they were travelling back to. It was anyone's guess what would happen if there were several potential locations; neither of them was willing to run any more risks than they already were.

This was goodbye.

"I can't-" Draco swallowed heavily. "You do realise we may never end up together now? Even if it works and you don't break the universe. It was such a remote chance in the first place."

She knew it was true. Hermione had never been a believer in Mr Right or other tripe about soul mates, and it had been a miracle that they had even managed to forge a friendship in spite of their past.

Even if it did happen again, it wouldn't happen to _them_. If their calculations held true, Hermione and Draco as they were now would never exist again. This moment, in the too-quiet house with the shadows of sorrow skulking in every corner, would be everything they ever had.

"I loved it. Every minute of it," she told him with a voice that only was shaking slightly. She was standing very straight, as if her life depended on keeping her spine as rigid as possible; all five foot three of her. Her head was tilted slightly backwards, so she could see his face for one last time. "Never doubt you were the very best thing that ever happened to me, Draco Malfoy."

Malfoys didn't make impassioned declarations, or even deign to reveal that they had feelings like ordinary mortals. As so often, however, Draco took her by surprise.

"I wanted to marry you, you know. I had a whole speech prepared to persuade you– I just wanted to convince Father first that it would happen whether he liked it or not, so it wouldn't be so uncomfortable for you."

It had always been the elephant in the room. Hermione had no doubt that Draco loved her with all the surprising passion he was capable of, but in his family marriage was conjoined with power and blood and politics, not love.

Marrying a Muggle-born would have been the ultimate insult to his father; a repudiation of all Draco had been raised to be. It had never mattered much to Hermione anyway, but now she felt an unexpected pang; being Draco's wife would have been unconscionably nice.

"I would have liked that," she told his left shoulder.

She didn't know how for long they were standing there, holding on so tightly to each other that they almost could pretend they were never letting go.

The brittle strokes of the ornate clock on the mantelpiece recalled them to reality, and the never-ceasing flow of hours and minutes hurrying them along on the relentless stream of time. Reluctantly they unwrapped themselves, Draco squaring his shoulders as if he was going into battle and Hermione tying her hair back like a shield maiden preparing to face the enemy.

It was time.

Draco Disillusioned her before taking another minute step back. His gaze was still locked with hers, unwavering even though she knew he couldn't actually see her. The sound of the tiny hourglass being turned seemed to echo in the room.

"Goodbye, my darling."

-oOo-

* * *

A second later Hermione was still at Malfoy Manor, but now the sun had not yet risen above the East Wing.

She had to get herself alone and hand over the Time-Turner so Hermione-minus-five-hours could travel the next step back in time and do the same. If it worked, a series of Hermiones could retrace her steps all the way back to when the planning permission for the shopping centre in New Carthage had been approved, and disrupt the chain of events that eventually would lead to Barekbaal's tomb being opened and the curse let loose.

Her past selves would have to come up with a way of preventing it from happening. If she could only get that far back in time, she had no doubt of her own resourcefulness: officials could be Confounded and maps manipulated.

The crucial question was whether she could amputate her own strand of time by undoing events in the past. There was no way of knowing what would happen once she approached her past self; would the paradox destroy the linearity of time and space? Or would Hermione's bet pay off and the branch of events that had started with the bulldozers breaking the Roman containment charms protecting the world from Barekbaal's revenge wither and die?

All she knew was that she had no memory of being approached by her future self, and yet she was here in the past. As long as she managed to sneak up to the bedroom she was sharing with Draco she would at least have provided a final rebuttal of Novikov's self-consistency principle, whatever else may happen.

There was another element of uncertainty; even if the universe didn't implode when she revealed herself to Hermione in this present, she had no idea what would happen to her current self. There was a distinct possibility that she would flicker out of existence, either immediately or when the five hours she had travelled in time were up.

The other possibility, which neither she nor Draco had acknowledged openly, was that she would be stuck in time indefinitely, trapped between paradoxes.

Staring down the prospect of eternity, Hermione could only hope that the end would come quickly.

-oOo-

* * *

**The chapter title is from the poem 'Do not go gentle into that good night' by Dylan Thomas from 1951.**

**Just one more chapter to go now...**


	4. Had We But World Enough, And Time

**********************Thanks again to ****Krystle Lynne who waved her magic wand over this - any remaining mistakes are my own.** The chapter title is from the poem 'To His Coy Mistress' by Andrew Marvell who wrote it in the mid-17**th**** century. **  


* * *

**Chapter 4**

**Had We But World Enough, And Time**

**-oOo-**

* * *

If Hermione hadn't known better, she would have thought Malfoy was trying to read the headlines on her scuffed copy of _Le Monde_ sideways. He'd been tilting his head at a funny angle ever since they both had entered the lift in the Atrium, eyes stuck in the direction of the crinkly newspaper stuffed under her elbow.

"I didn't realise the Malfoy fortune had been reduced to a point where you can't afford your own newspapers."

"_I _didn't realise you spoke French, Granger. Is there a particular reason you haven't been shouting it from the rooftops, the way you'd normally announce your achievements?"

"Sod off, Malfoy." She folded both arms across her chest, hiding her newspaper behind them so he couldn't peek at it.

"Is that any way to speak to your colleagues? Not exactly embracing the core values of the Ministry, are we?"

"What, like you're the poster boy for 'Collaboration, Cooperation and Integrity' all of a sudden?"

"You wound me, Granger. Unlike you I'm entirely committed to the great new dawn of this institution, as outlined by our dear Minister."

"So shoot me. You know as well as I do that none of this is Kingsley's fault – it's those bloody management consultants Percy brought in."

"Naturally, the Minister for Magic has no say in what goes on in his department once the bureaucratic powerhouse that is Percy Weasley gets his oar stuck in," Malfoy said with that supercilious sneer of his, and Hermione had to smother a snort. "Did you forget about 'Excellence', by the way? I think you had collaboration in there twice. Maybe that's something you feel you should improve upon."

How on earth could he be this waspish at a quarter to nine in the morning, Hermione wondered. Malfoy must spend his evenings thinking out retorts to use on his unsuspecting co-workers the next day. He had never been much of a morning person at Hogwarts as far as she could remember. Maybe he had discovered coffee after twenty-five years on pumpkin juice; caffeine could do that to a person.

"Oh, I think I manage to muddle through," she replied with as much false sweetness as she could muster as they both exited the lift at the ninth level.

The revolving foyer with its faceless twelve black doors no longer caused Hermione's heart to beat a little faster. After the first few weeks of the trainee program, the Department of Mysteries had ceased being an old battlefield and become her thoroughly undramatic place of work – apart from the occasional explosion, of course.

It was simply unfortunate that it came with a Malfoy.

The doors started spinning, faster and faster until they became a blurred circle. As they slowly wound down again and came to a stop, Hermione wondered idly what her new assignment would be. She had finished her project on alchemy before her impromptu holiday to Tunisia.

It had been... interesting. She tried hard not to dwell on what had happened; the smudged letter from a future that hopefully wouldn't occur now, the exquisite Time-Turner now hidden in the secret compartment at the back of her sock drawer, and the frustration of knowing just enough to be able to act but not nearly enough to understand what was going on. A new assignation at work would be perfect to take her mind off it– the more complex, the better.

Both Hermione and Malfoy muttered the spell to tell them which door they should pass through this morning; trying to find the right door by trial and error got old very fast. To their mutual surprise, both golden markers glowed briefly above the same door.

"After you, Granger."

"You're only saying that to avoid having to push the door open yourself," Hermione grumbled, but led the way.

"Miss Granger and Mr Malfoy. Excellent," Mr Minshaw from the Division of Heuristics and Experimental Spells greeted them from behind his impressive desk, which looked like it had been carved from a single piece of wood. Mr Minshaw himself, reedy and prone to sniffles, was less imposing but he did have a first-rate brain.

Hermione perked up.

"Do sit down," he bid them and they scrambled for the best chair. Hermione was quicker, so Malfoy had to turn his undignified grab into a little display of pulling the heavy armchair out for her. He ended up stuck on an ominously creaking Chippendale chair, which appeared to have spent the last two centuries being mishandled by visitors.

Malfoy angled his seat away from hers so he was looking straight at Minshaw, pretending Hermione wasn't even in the room. Well, two could play that game.

"You know each other already, don't you?" Minshaw asked and Hermione nodded curtly; she wasn't expecting Malfoy to do any cartwheels over the fact that they were previously acquainted either. "I'm glad, that should make your stay more pleasant."

Hermione surly reflected that for a bunch of very intelligent people, the employees of the Department of Mysteries could be incredibly detached from what was happening in the rest of the wizarding world. Their mutual antipathy was well known to most people, but apparently it had escaped Minshaw completely that Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy didn't exactly see eye to eye.

Wait, what was that about a 'stay'?

"You have both been assigned to a project in Edinburgh," Minshaw blathered on. "Due to the nature of the samples you'll be working on, you'll be required to reside there for the duration of the assignment – I trust this will not pose a problem for either of you?" He inspected them sternly over his half-moon glasses.

When you signed up for the trainee program you also agreed to go anywhere in the UK the Ministry decided to send you, so they could hardly start quibbling now. Malfoy looked slightly discomfited though; didn't like the thought of slumming it outside his manor, did he?

Hermione took extra pleasure in sounding as chirpy as possible as she replied: "Not at all, sir."

"No, sir," Malfoy replied more sedately.

"Capital. Bradshaw – Eunice Bradshaw, you know – will go over the details with you. Best of luck to you."

It could have been worse, Hermione thought. It could have been Bangor.

"Cheer up Malfoy, it might never happen," she told him, not unkindly, as they walked down the hall towards Bradshaw's office.

"It already has, Granger."

"With any luck it'll be such a disaster that they'll never put us on the same assignment again."

"I can only hope you'll be proven right."

"Don't worry, I usually am," she told him as she knocked on the ornate oak door with Bradshaw's name on a brass plate. It was a curiously Muggle touch down here.

The door swung open immediately and Hermione relished getting the last word; she had a feeling it wouldn't happen too often over the coming months. At least she wouldn't have to spend any of her spare time with Malfoy; it wasn't like they were going to be stuck in the Outer Hebrides, desperate for company. All she needed to do was to remain reasonably civil with him at work, and they'd survive the next few months somehow.

What could possibly go wrong?

**-oO THE END Oo-**

* * *

**I hope you enjoyed reading this story as much as I did writing it! This story started out when MysticDew said she'd like to read something with Hermione and Time-Turners... the rest just grew from there.  
**

**Reviews are most appreciated and any constructive criticism is very welcome. If there is anything you want to share that helps me improve the next story I'd be very grateful for your help.  
**


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